Estimates of Atlantic Goliath Grouper (Epinephelus Itajara) Bycatch Mortality in Commercial Fisheries of the Southeastern Us From 2002 to 2022

Abstract

Atlantic Goliath Grouper _Epinephelus itajara _is experiencing a population decline in the southeastern United States currently due to a combination of factors, including increasingly large and persistent red tides, loss of juvenile habitat, severe cold-weather events, and bycatch, the unintended capture by commercial and recreational fishers. In this paper, we review the extent of bycatch in the southeastern United States from 2002 to 2022 resulting from commercial fishing only based on data from NOAA Fisheries logbooks. We calculated depth-of-capture-related mortality based on known patterns of depth-related barotrauma and assumed that all captures deeper than 30 m that were unvented prior to release died based on observations of other researchers. The overall result is that 75% (14,124 of 18,770) _Epinephelus itajara_ captures died from both barotrauma and from inability of the fish to return to the bottom due to trapped swim bladder gas.